We have seen how the ten tribes were carried captive to Assyria, on the fall of Samaria, by Shalmanezer, B.C., 721. From that time history loses sight of the ten tribes, as a disti...
The history of this world begins, according to the chronology of Archbishop Ussher, which is generally received as convenient rather than probable, in the year 4004 before Christ....
We postpone the narrative of the settlements and empires which grew up on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, the oldest monarchies, until we have contemplated the early histo...
The condition of Rome when Caesar returned, crowned with glory, from his Gallic campaign, in which he had displayed the most consummate ability, was miserable enough. The constitut...
Early civilization. We understand by civilization the progress which nations have made in art, literature, material strength, social culture, and political institutions, by which h...
The only survivors of the generation that had escaped from Egypt were Caleb and Joshua. All the rest had offended God by murmurings, rebellion, idolatries, and sundry offenses, by...
In presenting the growth of that great power which gradually absorbed all other States and monarchies so as to form the largest empire ever known on earth, I shall omit a notice of...
The third of the great Oriental monarchies brought in contact with the Jews was that of the Medes and Persians, which arose on the dissolution of the Assyrian and Babylonian empire...
On the extinction of the Julian line, a new class of emperors succeeded, by whom the prosperity of the empire was greatly advanced. We have now to fall back on Niebuhr, Gibbon, and...
Concerning the original inhabitants of Asia Minor our information is very scanty. The works of Strabo shed an indefinite light, and the author of the Iliad seems to have been but i...
When Noah and his family issued from the ark, they were blessed by God. They were promised a vast posterity, dominion over nature, and all animals for food, as well as the fruits o...
No one would have supposed, B.C. 400, that the destruction of Grecian liberties would come from Macedonia--a semi-barbarous kingdom which, during the ascendency of Sparta, had so l...
We come now to consider briefly the career of Alexander, the son of Philip--the most successful, fortunate, and brilliant hero of antiquity. I do not admire either his character or...
On a great plain, four hundred miles in length and one hundred miles in width, forming the valley of the Euphrates, bounded on the north by Mesopotamia, on the east by the Tigris,...
With the defeat of the Persian armies, Athens and Sparta became, respectively, the leaders of two great parties in Greece. Athens advocated maritime interests and democratic instit...
The first country to which Moses refers, in connection with the Hebrew history, is Egypt. This favored land was the seat of one of the oldest monarchies of the world. Although it w...
We have already seen how the Athenian fleet was destroyed at the siege of Syracuse, where Nicias and Demosthenes were so lamentably defeated, which defeat resulted in the humiliati...
The assassination of Caesar was not immediately followed with the convulsions which we should naturally expect. The people were weary of war, and sighed for repose, and, moreover,...
A new era in the history of Rome now commences, a period of glory and shame, when a great change took place in the internal structure of the State, now corrupted by the introductio...
Although the Roman domination now extended in some form or other over most of the countries around the Mediterranean, still several States remained to be subdued, in the East and i...
The great and disastrous war between the two leading States of Greece broke out about two years and a half before the death of Pericles, but the causes of the war can be traced to...
The Peloponnesian war being closed, a large body of Grecian soldiers were disbanded, but rendered venal and restless by the excitements and changes of the past thirty years, and re...
We have alluded to the centralization of political power in the person of Octavius. He simply retained all the great offices of State, and ruled, not so much by a new title, as he...
The history of the Jews after the death of Herod is marked by the greatest event in human annals. In four years after he expired in agonies of pain and remorse, Jesus Christ was bo...
Great discontent had long existed among the Italian subjects of Rome. They were not only oppressed, but they enjoyed no political privileges. They did not belong to the class of bu...
On the death of Sulla, the Roman government was once more in the hands of the aristocracy, and for several years the consuls were elected from the great ruling families. But, in sp...
The Greeks possessed no authentic written history of that period which included the first appearance of the Hellenes in Thessaly to the first Olympiad, B.C. 776. This is called the...
We can not enter upon a detail of the conquests of David, the greatest warrior that his nation has produced. In successive campaigns, extending over thirty years, he reduced the va...
Rome was now the unrivaled mistress of the world. She had conquered all the civilized States around the Mediterranean, or had established a protectorate over them. She had no fears...
We come now to the most important and interesting of Grecian history--the great contest with Persia--the age of heroes and of battle-fields, when military glory was the master pass...